Actions from Evan SennMovable Type Pro 4.382015-02-27T01:00:00Zhttp://www.kcet.org/user/profile/jshawanda/mt-cp.cgi?__mode=feed&_type=actions&username=evansennPosted Santa Ana Sites: Eclectic Ensemble wild Up Comes to Orange County to Artboundtag:www.kcet.org,2015:/arts/artbound//1834.803082015-02-27T09:00:00Z2015-02-28T00:10:34ZThe pop-up series, Santa Ana Sites, features the experimental music group "wild Up," an ensemble that re-interprets modern-classical music.Evan Sennhttp://www.kcet.org/cgi-bin/mt/mt-cp.cgi?__mode=view&blog_id=1834&id=6312
Classical music has begun a resurgence in contemporary popular culture, as upstart troupes re-interpret old works, and finding new breath in the revered composers' creations. Conductor Christopher Roundtree is leading the pack in this new renaissance of classical music. Founder of wild Up, Roundtree, 31, hopes to open up a wider discourse on music in general, with specific attention to the mastery that is classical music and rock and roll. And, although Los Angeles is the Mecca for culture and creativity, Santa Ana is coming up as an alternative hub for experimentation and creative expression in the arts, in visual arts, performing arts and in music.

Santa Ana Sites, a young pop-up series of concerts and performances, has created a platform for experimental groups like wild Up to participate in non-traditional events and engage unsuspecting viewers or visitors to witness and participate in a new way to consider performing arts, dance and music. Founded by Allen Moon and John Spiak, Santa Ana Sites is revitalizing the Orange County area with a brighter, fresher, non-traditional art scene, engaging artists, dancers and musicians in a variety of events that move around this creative hub city.

This week, Santa Ana Sites presents wild Up at the new Logan Creative art center in downtown Santa Ana, the eighth event under the umbrella of Santa Ana Sites. Focusing on modernizing old classics, this installment of Sites will focus on modern music for strings. The Logan Creative space is a new addition to the downtown Santa Ana scene that houses a handful of artists, has artist studios, exhibition spaces, work areas, and hosts a number of art-related events.

Santa Ana Sites Artistic Director and co-Founder Allen Moon hopes that the presentation in a non-traditional concert venue will highlight the vitality of contemporary music and performance with wild Up and Pacific Symphony. "I think it's a particularly relevant theme when discussing the future of modern music (or modern art)," Moon says. "Both threads are equally valid and inspiring, but come from different places, yet both end up striving towards the same end."

wild Up's founder and director, Christopher Roundtree is excited about performing at the industrial loft-style Logan Creative space. "I grew up in L.A. but also in Irvine, so this is kind of home for me;" Roundtree explains, "and to make it weirder, taking classical music out of a hall that may have cost tens of thousands of dollars and put it into an industrial place that used to make staircases and now houses a bunch of artists, like that's really exciting."

Though wild Up has been diligently surprising and inspiring people with their unique brand of re-interpreted modern-classical music, their hard work has only recently paid off. "Three years ago, we all couldn't pay our rent, and now, we are all working with the L.A. Philharmonic and traveling and having managers," Roundtree said. "It's a totally different world where really the classical music community has really embraced us as the experimenters and the future of the genre is. It's a really great feeling."

wild Up will be partnering with the Pacific Symphony, a well-established classical orchestra for the Santa Ana performance to explore a mix of contemporary music inspired by the old masters.

"As a conductor, what I love about this collaboration is that our 'chops' are all in different areas," says Roundtree. "wild Up: They're explorers, they all love making sounds, tearing their instruments apart (sometimes literally) and doing things that no one else can, because they are totally fearless. To combine that energy with the immense precision, clarity, intention and brilliance of the Pacific Symphony players--what a collaboration."

The boundaries of what classical music is shifting and changing with help from ensembles like wild Up. Collaborating with traditional symphonies and orchestras helps grow their impact and inspire a wider variety of people to explore both classical music and rock music. Roundtree attributes his obsession with melding the two seemingly disparate genres together to his youthful days of playing in rock bands when he was a teenager. Through his formal classical training in music, he was able to see the similarities in the heart of the two different musical styles. "I started playing classical music because of pieces like those of Shostakovich Chamber Symphony, where, when the strings really dig into their instruments--this might as well be punk rock," he says. "Some of this music might as well be Black Flag or Anthrax, I think it's is like pre-metal, pre-punk rock."

Roundtree compares the wild Up creations and performances to a platypus, "the weirdest combination between a duck and a beaver--it's like that," he says. It may strike some people as weird, to find beauty in strange sounds and finding parallels in strange ways.

As far as their name goes, Roundtree says it was inspired by an E.E. Cummings poem, though no one can recall its exact origin. He attributes it more to a group effort in the spirit of the endeavor. "We just couldn't call it 'Unabashed Joy-Making,' so I think 'wild' and 'Up' became the synonym for that," he explains.

wild Up is speeding up, not slowing down. They're currently preparing for a show in April at UCLA and collaborating with the Los Angeles Philharmonic in May for the Next on Grand Composition Intensive, where 16 young composers and a faculty of eight legendary composers collaborate on new work.

wild Up's more experimental and indie music collaborations include working with Bjork's choir Graduale Nobili and Valgeir Sigurðsson in Reykjavik Iceland; playing with Ellis Ludwig-Leone and rock band San Fermin under a tyrannosaurus rex at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles; premiering and recording Lewis Pesacov of band Fool's Gold's opera about the end of the Mayan Calendar; and forthcoming premieres of works by Domino Records recording artist Julia Holter and Jane's Addiction's bassist Eric Avery.

The upcoming Santa Ana performance is just one of many interesting expressions of the obsessive and inspired experiments and collaborations that wild Up is known for. The group decided on a specific grouping of songs, finding special twists and turns in the set list to enhance the juxtaposition and similarities between the different pieces. The concert will feature music by two classically trained musicians and icons of the contemporary rock scene: "Popcorn Superhet Receiver" by Jonny Greenwood, the lead guitar player in Radiohead, and "Lachrimae" by Bryce Dessner, guitar player in the indie band The National. Other pieces to be performed include Andrew Norman's "Gran Turismo," Arvo Pärt's "Summa," John Dowland's "Flow My Tears" and Dmitri Shostakovich's Chamber Symphony for Strings in C Minor, Op. 110a. Roundtree said that he met with the Pacific Symphony directors and had to really talk every decision and transition through with them, to perfect and explain the subtle and strange selections he designed, which always proves to be a bit challenging for both parties. "I really interface in the way of us being a rock band and kind of doing whatever we want," Roundtree says, "and there's this long canon of classical music, and the way that that works, some of the ethos of a rock band goes straight against that."

"On the surface, we all play the same instruments, and we all have masters degrees and professional training and similar experience, but I think the way we approach the work is totally different, and so that's what really excited me about it. We get to make music that Pacific Symphony probably wouldn't pick on their own, especially in this grouping of pieces."

To cross the bridges between rock music and classic music, the choices must be exquisite and unique or it can become very trite and obvious. Roundtree explains that it is all about having each piece affect the approach to the opposite, letting the skills, techniques and style of sound influence its opposing genre or style. "When you play [classical music] next to music that is like rock or punk rock music, you can let the noises from that music influence earlier music, and vise versa--each one influencing the other in an equal way."

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Top Image: Previous Santa Ana Sites event

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Posted Kevin Stewart-Magee's Ubiquitous California Murals to Artboundtag:www.kcet.org,2015:/arts/artbound//1834.796902015-02-10T09:00:00Z2015-02-17T23:00:51ZSince the early 90s, Orange County artist Kevin Stewart-Magee has created over 100 corporately, publicly and privately-sponsored murals in six states.Evan Sennhttp://www.kcet.org/cgi-bin/mt/mt-cp.cgi?__mode=view&blog_id=1834&id=6312
Over the past twenty years, artist Kevin Stewart-Magee has created over 100 corporately, publicly and privately-sponsored murals in six states since the early 1990s. His attention to detail and his fondness of the California color palette make his signature style recognizable. His impeccable understanding of natural light and his skill for realism help his created scenes come to life. Born in Iran and raised in Ohio, Stewart-Magee is now living and working in Orange County. During his graduate education at California State University, Fullerton, he was diagnosed with non-metastatic/basel cell skin cancer as a result of his expansive career as a muralist. Through a handful of invasive treatments and his passion for paint, he was compelled to study, learn and teach safer practices for artists, and finding sustainability in art. Now, he spends most of his time painting on a smaller scale, researching how to inform and educate others on green studio practices, and scouting abandoned government facilities for new paintings.

Raised in rural America and finding peace and comfort in the notion of community within the working class, his MFA exhibit, "Work" approached the gallery and studio space for artists as workspaces, and considering what an artist's "work" is. "It's just the reality that this is a job and the life of an art-worker shares many of the same concerns and joys as other engaging, rewarding work," Stewart-Magee explains. "Bringing light to the mysterious studio and gallery can benefit both the artist and the viewer by facilitating new conversations about what part of this is art and what the process between ideation and creating involves."

A "workday," to Stewart-Magee, is also a macro version of the bigger life and the final product, idea, investigation and creation, in some form. A workday in itself is the same for many people. Cyclical in nature, at the end of the day, you pack up and come back another time to do it all over again. The remnants of the day become mere artifacts or ruins of the past, much like the abandoned buildings and storefronts he is obsessed with in his current series of paintings. "The old, forgotten art is haunted and that may be one of the best things about it," he says.

Having been a part of the Pomona, downtown Los Angeles scene, Fullerton art scenes, the evolution of industry has fascinated him for years. His current series deals with what's left over after a place, a person or a business has its heyday. Abandoned homes, empty storefronts, decrepit and empty air bases, forgotten encampments, deserted technology -- whole lives have lived, devoted to an industry, a job, a purpose, and when it's done, it's just left there to sit as a reminder, a marker, a grave. Stewart-Magee's palette is classic California colors, where you can almost feel the time of day, the temperature of the shade and the sun. Combining such powerful color techniques with his fascinating concepts, he creates a sensitive scene, evoking a deeper understanding of the ebbs and flows of humanity and time.

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Stewart-Magee's murals are alluring. His talent in painting is not limited a gigantic spread of a wall however, his smaller paintings also evoke immense emotion as the quality and style carry over. His murals, much like his smaller canvas paintings, involves months or research. One of his murals in Pomona, "Pomona Envisions the Future" depicts the goddess Pomona looking into a fertile future, and was the only lasting piece of the 2003 community project, "Envisioning the Future," and the mural has now become a landmark to represent the area. Stewart-Magee finds solace in community engagement, and helping others. "I have to say, with the murals and the community engagement projects in the past, I really miss that," Stewart-Magee says. "I miss being able to go out and do six months of painting, and it seems like today the work needs to be not just invested in execution but invested in its conceptual ideation. It needs to be well thought out and deeply researched for it to resonate."

Stewart-Magee hasn't completely turned off the mural-making part of his brain, he has upcoming mural projects in Lancaster and in Paris, France in the future. After chemotherapy and surgery to remove the cancer on his face and arm, he says he just needs to figure out how to protect his already damaged skin while creating those projects. But, it was his own personal experience that propelled his soon-to-be book project on toxicology and how to have a green studio practice. "For a 'sin' that I committed 25 years ago, with a process that everybody thought was super cool -- turns out it was destroying my skin, and now I have to put chemo on my arm every year," Stewart-Magee says. "No one told me that was going to happen. I just want to be able to tell people that these are really great processes. So that when artists don't follow the rules -- which they don't -- they know how to mitigate that."

Now, his studio is safe and clean, and his work is a bit smaller. The size difference wasn't a big concern for Stewart-Magee though; he was more concerned with creating something meaningful and epic, regardless of the size. "Part of the reason I wanted to move into studio work -- and go to graduate school -- is the question 'can you do something epic that isn't 65 feet long?'" he says. "I was attracted to murals because they were great big paintings, not because they were on the street. I was attracted to them because they involved the community, they had big ideas, and they had depth and investment."

His latest obsession is helping others create green studio practices through education and implementation. He has traveled around to many local universities to teach his green ideas and techniques, to the students and the faculty. He is in process of publishing a book on the subject, aiming to educate people on the ever-changing rules, regulations, hazards and precautions artists should know. Stemming from his own personal experience with over exposure and chronic use of hazardous materials simply through his art practice, Stewart-Magee saw firsthand how important it was to simply know the right information. "It's not the acute care I'm worried about, most artists know that stuff," Stewart-Magee explains, "but all the stuff regarding long term, chronic care, and specific concerns for women's health, prenatal care, young men's health -- and finding out what materials are in everything and how that can affect you."

Artists very rarely do what they're supposed to, especially with their art materials, it's just the nature of creativity, but there aren't enough people dealing with the irregular behaviors and reactions with these materials, and Stewart-Magee has taken it upon himself to do it, at least for some local schools, artists, and teachers. ". . . It's kind of just us suddenly catching up with the fact that no one has been informing all these people about safety," he says. "I'm really interested in teaching people how to take care of themselves and their community."

Stewart-Magee's drive in his teaching, his research and his art all come from a similar interest in service to others and passion for community -- this is clear right when you meet him. A charismatic, always smiling, jolly and adventurous person, he always finds the positive spin on things, and wants to help anyone who needs it. Coming from a small town he feels very strongly about creating a supportive community, and hanging on to it. This aspect of his personality -- paired with his successful career as a professional painter and muralist -- makes him brave in his art, taking conceptual leaps of faith and visually engaging connections with people and places in his artistic creations. "You don't run away from it, you run toward it," he says.

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Posted The Untold Stories of Californian Impressionism to Artboundtag:www.kcet.org,2015:/arts/artbound//1834.798982015-02-02T09:00:00Z2015-02-05T00:00:10ZA new exhibition at The Irvine Museum displays the chaotic history of California through impressionistic works by some of the great painters of the late 1800s. Evan Sennhttp://www.kcet.org/cgi-bin/mt/mt-cp.cgi?__mode=view&blog_id=1834&id=6312
If you've grown up in California, you may remember the missions of California as they pertained to your masterpiece of a three-dimensional model that you had to build in fourth grade, as part of the history of California curriculum. Mr. Jean Stern, the Executive Director of The Irvine Museum says that's where most people's education of California history starts and ends. "It's really not taught in the public schools, in fourth grade, they talk about the missions a little bit, but there really isn't another class until you get to college, and then it's an elective," he says. "It's something that we feel isn't right; people should know about their history." The art of this time period is painterly and romantic, narrative and full of passion. The colors, the compositions, the subjects -- they're all rich with curiosity and adoration, itching for ears and eyes to hear and see these tantalizing stories come to life.

The Irvine Museum has been operating as one of the only admission-free museums in Southern California for over 22 years now, focusing on the Impressionist Period (1890-1930) of art through educational exhibitions, tours, youth engagement programming, and fascinating historically significant books on art and history in California. Their most recent project has been the "California: This Golden Land of Promise" exhibition, which has over 44 paintings and etchings that depict the rich history of this area. Focusing on the untouched California landscape, the Native American tribes that called this area their home, the many missions of California, and the tumultuous history of the changing dynamics between the Spanish, Mexican and American presence in this land, this exhibition displays the chaotic history of California through gorgeous, impressionistic works by some of the great painters the late 1800s.

"California has a unique distinction, you know, within a hundred years, roughly from 1880-1980, going from almost no population in certain parts, like in Southern California, to a huge population," Stern says. "Northern California was relatively sparse until the gold rush--the gold rush brought tons of people over, but not to the south."

The Irvine Museum's focused time period is one of the least understood eras in art, and Stern says that very few people knew there was any kind of art tradition in California during that time. "The Impressionist Period, roughly from about 1890 to about 1930 is the period when California art really grew and expanded, and had a lot of artists come to California. In our collection, there were only two artists that were actually born in California. But, almost all of them died in California," he says. During this time, California grew enormously from very sparsely populated region to a very heavily populated area, primarily thanks to the advent of the railroads in the 1880s. A lot of agricultural empires, including the Irvine Ranch, grew in that period, because transportation was finally available to get the produce out to the rest of the country, because of the railroads. "It's an interesting history," Stern says. "California is a remarkable land, a beautiful land, and it has a history--a very interesting one."

Much of the exhibition focuses on the upheaval of this time, with the Spanish ruled missions, Mexico's separation from Spain, the trouble with the Native Americans and the ranchos, and the return of the missions to the Catholic Church. "Southern California was characterized in the 1860s and 1870s as very large ranchos, which had been formed from the original land the missions had, and those lands were taken away from the missions in the 1830s by the Mexican government."

The paintings and etchings involved in this show tell a rich story in a delicate time, when there really weren't many witnesses. Though the missions played a huge part in the history of this land, with each one garnering hundreds of thousands of acres for each one, the artists didn't take an interest in these fortresses until long after they were abandoned. They didn't look like how they look now. Now, they're gardens and fountains and gift shops, but according to Stern, in those days, they were fortified encampments where Native Americans were forced to stay and were trained to do menial work. "The romanticizing came much later," Stern explained, "50-60 years after the missions were abandoned. Like so many things with films and literature, the romance had little to do with what actually happened there."

"A lot of artists came to California to paint the missions because they were the equivalent of the ancient Greek and Roman ruins," Stern explained. "They were deserted places that were partially collapsed, with all sorts of romantic imagery attached to them."

The Mission Capistrano was the 7th mission founded in the state, and was founded in 1776, according to Stern. For the next fifty years, 21 missions were founded throughout California, stretching as far north as Sonoma County. They were all connected by El Camino Real, the Royal Road or the King's Highway, which today approximates Highway 101. When President Abraham Lincoln returned what was left of the mission buildings to the church in the 1850s, the relics of these religious institutions seemed like distant memories of some spiritual foreign venture, and a serious effort after that point was made to try and preserve what was left of them.

Featuring paintings and etchings by William Wendt, Charles Rollo Peters, Alexander Harmer, William Hahn, among dozens of others, the exhibition "California: This Golden Land of Promise" utilizes local collectors, the community, the permanent collection of the museum and the personal collection of Mrs. Joan Irvine Smith, one of the museum's founders, to display the most interesting visual expressions and experiences of California life during this time. The exhibition also is paired with a book by the same name that has over 400 illustrations and works of art, to help illustrate the fascinating and well-documented history in this text.

The Irvine Museum is dedicated to furthering the education and engagement with California schools, universities, and art lovers, to carry on the history of this area into the future. You'll never look at a mission diorama the same way again.

The exhibition closes May 21, 2015.

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Posted The Folk Art of SoCal Sign Painting to Artboundtag:www.kcet.org,2015:/arts/artbound//1834.795802015-01-12T09:00:00Z2015-01-16T00:10:56ZA small handful of niche trade programs, companies, and artists in Southern California have recently been driving a revival of the sign painting art form.
Evan Sennhttp://www.kcet.org/cgi-bin/mt/mt-cp.cgi?__mode=view&blog_id=1834&id=6312
While businesses have had painted signs since time immemorial, a proliferation of sign painting arose in America during the 1800s as a means to identify products, buildings and companies as capitalism began to boom. Sign painting began out of sheer necessity for businesses and organizations, and slowly turned into an advertising medium, forcing the competitive edge to rise and the need for signage to grow. Until the advent of digital vinyl lettering in the 1980s greatly reduced the demand for hand painted signs, hand lettered signs were not only an accepted lifelong career, but they were a much-needed service, for almost any business.

Though vinyl lettering put many sign painting businesses out of work, folksy art form continues as a handful of niche trade programs, companies and artists spearhead a hand-letting revival. Southern California is one of the most densely important areas for sign painting and the continuation of this traditional art form. In Santa Ana, one local gallery is pushing many businesses to explore these long term signs that not only support local arts, but help create a unique brand specifically for each company. As a part of the recent exhibit, "Sign Painters," Marcas Contemporary Art Gallery coordinated a screening of the amazing documentary "Sign Painters," by Faythe Levine and Sam Macon, and highlighted local O.C. lettering artists Colt Bowden and Patrick G. Smith, as they hosted a series of in-gallery workshops, lectures, demos and more.

"There has only been around eight sign painting shows in the past couple years, nationwide," Dana Jazayeri, one of the owners of the Marcas Gallery said. "This exhibit was the first time there was an actual show with the documentary, so that's why we did it, so you could embrace this art, and get a little more of the history behind it, and then with the demos and the pop-up sign shop, you can actually watch them work."

Faythe Levine, co-director of the Sign Painters film says that they "barely skimmed the surface of this movement and these artists. We wanted to make an approachable, informational piece for the general public, but also fully endorsed by the sign industry. We really wanted to create a platform for a larger discussion of this art."

To stand out against graphic design homogeneity, some businesses are starting to see the real value in the unique aesthetic of hand painted signage. The distinct, hand-painted signs have their own style that is irresistible to the eye. And the stories of the sign painters, provide a sense of history to each piece.

Patrick G. Smith, one of the area's most prolific sign painters, has been in the business of lettering and hand-painting signs for over forty years. While serving in the Vietnam War, he painted signs for the navy and army. They had him run a sign shop in Vietnam where he painted with other guys, making directional signs for the entire area, for the armed forces. After coming back with years of experience, he took over a sign shop here in Orange County and was a self-employed sign painter for 30 years. He also worked at the Disneyland Sign Shop for seven years, and also founded the Letterheads in the 1980s. He now works out of his home studio in Orange.

"I'm so glad to see a resurgence in the sign arts. Learning a craft takes time, practice and experience and asking a lot of questions and reading a lot of books," well-known local sign painter Patrick Smith told Traditional Sign Maker Magazine.

Patrick is responsible for most of the classic painted signs in historic Old Towne Orange, amongst many other areas in Southern California, and still goes around cleaning and touching up the work. At the exhibition, he also passed down a lesson or two on the artform. "You could sit in front of Patrick G. Smith -- to just anyone, that might not mean anything, but to this group of individuals, it means a lot, and then they get to sit five feet from him and listen to forty years of his knowledge, because he's been painting since Vietnam," Jazayeri says.

The tradition of sign painting is far from dead. Though the influx of technology took out many of the sign painting businesses, the young resurgence of the skill and aesthetic has revived the art form, and created a whole new generation of sign painters and a whole new industry looking for this kind of work. Colt Bowden is a young local sign painter who is passionate about reviving this art form, and the interest in this kind of signage in urban environments. Originally a professional skateboarder, Bowden is now consumed with painting signs, preserving signs, trying to spread the knowledge of sign painting and keep the tradition alive.

"Just like how people buy vintage furniture, they're going back to old aesthetics and old values, so some businesses incorporate that more into their commercial look," Jazayeri explains. "Old values seem to be trending now too, old furniture, vintage fashion, so this is something that falls into that visual standpoint. People would rather see something like this than that electric, plexiglas Boost Mobile sign."

Bowden helped start the Pre-Vinylite Society, a newer group of like-minded individuals that want to promote the creation of signs, art and writings that convey "an astute cognizance of the aesthetic built environment and a desire to create new, forward-focused art that respects the traditions and techniques of the past," according to their manifesto. Colt and the Pre-Vinylite Society have redesigned and republished numerous sign painting books, tutorial style books, sheets, and learning tools. Before the internet, that's how the only way sign painters would learn techniques and styles--through rare and expensive books.

"There is a young upstart, a handful of mid-career sign painters, most of the masters are retiring from the trade," Jazayeri says. "The Pre-Vinylite Society is a group trying to bridge the generation gap through bringing to light the knowledge and traditions held by the masters of the trade, as well as practice the craft in a way that helps to bring the best level of craft and artistry to the trade."

Luckily, Southern California has the largest concentration of sign painters, over anywhere else. "Between Los Angeles and San Francisco, there is a larger area of people who are doing traditional sign painting, even still. But, there are sign painters everywhere," Levine explains.

Traditionally, sign painters come to be professionals in their trade by first being an apprentice, then becoming a journeyman, then coming full circle to a Master Sign Painter that would take on apprentices and hire other upstart sign painters. "In this day and age, the battle between hand painted signage and the digitally printed banner or plotter cut vinyl sticker is one that is constantly lost," Jazayeri says.

The documentary "Sign Painters" provides an in-depth look a handful of sign painters across the country, young and old, male and female, and their journeys are all different too. Levine and Macon spent almost two years interviewing and filming these dedicated artists, whose work rarely gets noticed. They explore this art form through anecdotal accounts from artists including Ira Coyne, Bob Dewhurst, Keith Knecht, Norma Jeane Maloney and Stephen Powers. These vanguards of this forgotten art form seem to exemplify the classic working class American success story.

"Before the last thirty years, it was the only way for people to have their signs done," Levine says of the craft.

Though some Master Sign Painters are still taking apprentices and keeping the tradition alive through these clubs and organizations, the only school that teaches traditional and modern techniques for sign painting is the Los Angeles Trade Technical College, run by legendary sign painter Doc Guthrie.

"Having a chance to be around Doc Guthrie, who has been and still is holding down that sign graphic program at L.A. Trade Tech--he even kept it open during the '80s when there was no real interest in sign painting. He would go down to Venice Beach and find people and hustle graffiti writers to keep the program open, and now, that program is at an all-time high for enrollment, so his energy and enthusiasm was really exciting to be around."

Though the feature length film only touched on a handful of artists, most of whom are well-known in the industry, Levine admits that there are so many more that she wished she could've had the chance to interview and highlight in the film. "We spent about a year and a half just shooting [for this film], and eventually just had to stop ourselves because we could've filmed forever. I think Sam and I feel really good about what we've done with this specific project."

This independently produced documentary is now finally available on DVD, and has an incredible thorough book that goes along with it, published by Princeton Architectural Press also called Sign Painters.

Though most people don't think about signs and lettering, it was the humble and original basis for our current heavily saturated advertising industry, and is growing into a rare but treasured art form that should be revered and celebrated in urban environments more. Some cities try and restore or commission these more permanent and original signs, like Lodi, California. With proper grants and funding, the city works with local businesses and major sign painting artists from all over the country to create and preserve large hand-painted signs and murals, to keep the aesthetic and history of the town alive.

"Santa Ana has a lot of ghost signs, which are old faded signs on buildings, but then there are a lot of new businesses that are using it too," Jazayeri says. "Colt did Boldo, Wursthaus used sign painting too, because it looks different. Vinyl and LED stuff is normal, it's cookie cutter, and so, what's the opposite of that?"

The exhibition and documentary were merely a glimpse at this very involved history and skill, but with the help of local revivalists, more and more cities in Southern California are going the way of the sign painters.

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Top Image: Sign by Jeff Canham, from the "Sign Painters" film and book.

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Posted The Turkey Platter Museum: Holidays in Chinatown to Artboundtag:www.kcet.org,2014:/arts/artbound//1834.779042014-12-03T09:00:00Z2014-12-05T22:38:48ZThe Turkey Platter Museum in Chinatown's Red Pipe Gallery spans 120 years of traditional porcelain, ceramic and earthware turkey platters.Evan Sennhttp://www.kcet.org/cgi-bin/mt/mt-cp.cgi?__mode=view&blog_id=1834&id=6312
In a Chinatown gallery, more than 200 turkey platters congregate on a wall. Spanning 120 years of traditional porcelain, ceramic and earthware turkey platters, these platters cover the walls of the Red Pipe Gallery in Chinatown's gallery row, Chung King Road. Nestled next one another, the ceramics portray patriotic and nostalgic scenes, evoking the consumerist spirit of the holidays.

The hundreds of plates and platters were collected over 30 years by Helen Gleason. Her son, Mat Gleason curates the exhibit, and owns and operates another local art gallery space, Coagula Curatorial in Chinatown. Helen and her son Mat had been planning on doing an exhibit like this for years, but when a last minute opening showed up in the programming, both Gleasons decided to create the Turkey Platter Museum. Though most Thanksgiving themed decorations and collectibles tend to range between cliché and pedestrian, Helen's collection is impressive and tasteful -- a wide variety of plates, from the craftier, swap meet style platters to the high-end, antique British chinaware. The collection feels personally significant, not just kitschy and clever. "My mom has seven kids, and Thanksgiving was the only time every year where she could get a picture of all her kids together," Mat explains. "I know it was always an important holiday for her, more important than a lot of the others. Thanksgiving was all about her family, you know, the big important things to her, everyone being together. I guess it came from that."

Helen started her collection back in the 1980s and got really into researching and seeking out great turkey platters at home and when she traveled. She got one as a gift from her sister. "After she got two, forget it," Mat said. "Every time she went to a thrift store, garage sale, or swap meet; anything with turkeys, she would buy. Just for about 30 years, she's been picking them up wherever she would go."

The platters and plates that cover the walls in this gallery depict turkeys in styles that range from realism to expressionism, and represent a history of 120 years. The Turkey Platter Museum is a temporary exhibition, but caries an interesting mix of antique, one-of-a-kind pieces and contemporary mass-produced replicas.

With their economy struggling shortly after the Revolutionary War, the British began targeting America as a market by offering dinnerware depicting historical landmarks, the expansion of the West and patriotic scenes. English potters began producing turkey themed wares for the American market circa 1870, shortly after Abraham Lincoln declared the fourth Thursday of November to be the nation's federally official Thanksgiving Day in 1863. By the 1870s, America's growing middle class embraced the celebratory hungered to celebrate the occasion, and to do so with fine Thanksgiving china. Many companies response to the need was to create a series of elegant, crafty, or whole-heartedly American dinnerware patterns depicting the holiday's signature imagery and bird, the turkey.

"Most of them were made to be wedding gifts, Mat explained. "When someone would get married, especially in the 30s, 40s, and 50s, they're going to obviously start a family--because that's why you got married back then--so you get them a turkey platter because they're going to be having their own thanksgiving. It was a big gift to give somebody."

The companies that produced the platters have very little documentation of the history of these holiday plates, but some of the more well-known creators include Wedgewood, Johnson Brothers, Enoch Wood, Masons, Churchill (modern), Spode, Staffordshire, Barker Brothers, and many more. With the lack in research and records, the collection of the plates and platters becomes a kind of treasure hunt, with excitement and history to be uncovered with every new addition. "There aren't really many known turkey platter artists," Mat said, "but there are certain kilns, from like 100 years ago or 80 years ago, from England--if you have a turkey platter from this kiln, which is marked on the back, that's a big deal, those are considered to be like the best, the ones that other people copied."

Ranging in price and size, Helen and Mat were able to determine what a lot of the platters were worth based on research, markings and information on the backs of many of these turkey themed dishes. The oldest platters in the collection dating back to the later 1890s. "Those are called the 'bleu floue,'" Mat said, "blurry blue in French, and there have been a number of people come in that were excited about those, people that know antiques well." Obviously, there are many that are kitschy, mass-produced replicas as well, but there are also quite a few that look original and distinctive in some way. "Some are hand-painted and seem like they may be unique, and that even though they might have been working with a stencil or some kind of style that any other versions of this might be somehow altered, especially the Italian ones, they seem to be very intricately hand-painted."

When removed from their function, the platters become something else: art objects.They are artifacts from everyday America, revealing who we are by the way we celebrate.

Turkey Platter Museum is open until January 4, 2015 in Chinatown's Red Pipe Gallery.

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Posted The Marvelous Marble of Elizabeth Turk to Artboundtag:www.kcet.org,2014:/arts/artbound//1834.766492014-10-16T08:00:00Z2014-12-31T22:10:12ZA pioneer in marble arts for 20 years, Elizabeth Turk has helped marble come back with a vengeance into the contemporary art scene.Evan Sennhttp://www.kcet.org/cgi-bin/mt/mt-cp.cgi?__mode=view&blog_id=1834&id=6312
Winding and weaving ribbons of stone lead into a corner of organized chaos in the Chiarini Marble & Stone shop in the Logan neighborhood of downtown Santa Ana. This tiny corner in this giant marble yard and shop is covered with some of the strangest looking creations, soft and silky, delicate and abstract -- but definitely made from marble. The thin, experimental objects are delicately placed all over, as if this corner was a tiny, dust-covered outdoor art gallery, or an altar to the ancient marble gods. These objects are hypnotic and intimate, drawing the viewer closer and closer, with great detail and intricacy in every aspect of these intense objects.

Elizabeth Turk, the creator of these marvelous specimens, is a contemporary sculptor who, throughout her artistic career, has helped marble come back with a vengeance, into contemporary art. Pioneering this movement in marble arts for over 20 years, Turk has been pushing the boundaries of the material as she creates her monumental contemporary sculptures.

"In all my work, instead of trying to find balance, I try to find the lightness in weight, or the emptiness in mass, kind of deconstructing these paradoxes, not one thing or the other, but somewhere in between," Turk says.

Raised in Orange County, with a geologist father, Turk always loved stone. With such a fondness for rocks, it's amazing that she is able to carve out her own path through this treacherous material. But Turk has been dedicating her career to stone carving. With a background in traditional marble sculpting, after finishing her education in the 1990s, she wanted to make more compelling work than what she had seen already -- something outside the norm of traditional marble figures and decoration. She experimented with the materials of her art form. Eventually, she expanded her practice to include new technologies, helping push her work further toward contemporary abstract. The technologies used in marble carving were accelerating at the same time her work was gaining momentum in the art world, so she tried every new technology available, to hone her style and craft to its peak.

"It's amazing how much memory stone has," she explains, "there is much more of a give than I had originally anticipated, as a material."

A serial artist, Turk explores trends within her own work. Her ribbons, collars, cages and disrupting bands are all seemingly separated within her personal artistic timeline, but the continuity in her style is distinct. Few manipulate stone like Turk. "With all this work," Turk says, "it's trying to deconstruct a paradox, ancient material with all contemporary means -- found objects, new technology, creating a dialogue." She has been on the cover of dozens of sculpture magazines, has won dozens of fellowships and awards including the notorious MacArthur Fellowship, and has been exhibited in galleries and museums all over the world.

Her newest project with the Laguna Art Museum peers past the elegant and strong façade of her creations and dives into process, theory and relativity. With a site-specific installation, a large selection of her collars, and two rooms dedicated to the artist's process and creativity, "Sentient Forms" at Laguna Art Museum serves as a kind of retrospective for Turk. Paired alongside Turk's Sentient Forms in four of the main gallery spaces in the museum is Lita Albuquerque's "Particle Horizon," a second site-specific installation and performance. "Particle Horizon" occupies the museum's Segerstrom Gallery (lower level) and "An Elongated Now" takes place between the museum and Main Beach. These impressive projects from two powerful artists are part of the ongoing annual "Art + Nature" festival in Laguna Beach, which seeks to redefine the way Laguna Beach art interacts with nature.

Museum director Malcolm Warner says that the fusion of art and nature doesn't have to result in landscape painting, and that both nature and art can inspire people, and that they are both equally important to the Laguna Beach community. Taken from the Center for Art & Environment at the Nevada Museum of Art in Reno, Laguna's Art + Nature festival wants to encourage artistic interaction between humankind and nature, and only in their second year, it keeps improving upon itself. Beginning on Thursday, November 6, and coinciding with Laguna's First Thursday Art Walk, galleries like Art Cube, Salt Fine Art, Artists Republic4Tomorrow, De Rus Fine Arts, The Redfern Gallery, Joann Artman, Kelsey Michaels, LCAD on Forest and Peter Blake Gallery will stage exhibitions based on themes illustrating the symbiotic relationships between nature and art.

The exhibition at the museum features separate installations by Albuquerque and Turk, but pairing these specific artists together in this festival creates a fascinating dialogue between ethereal, transcendental experiences and powerful objects, as well as the relationship between humankind and nature. Albuquerque is known for her bright and serene abstract works, evoking feeling and experience in subtle yet powerful ways. Paired with Turk, who is known for her abstract, meticulous creations made from Earth's most precious rocks, the dialogue alone between the two artists creates a lush and rich experience for any museum-goer.

Within Turk's installations on the main floor, there are four rooms that include sculptures, installations, multimedia work, an exploratory inspiration space, and one main centerpiece -- a custom mixed media installation inspired by the Ryoan-ji Japanese garden, with a Turk twist. "I just love the serenity, and the contemplation," Turk says about the Ryoan-ji garden in Kyoto. Turk chooses her stones based on aesthetics and the unique lives you can see in their appearance, and finds new artistic life with their history. "All of the stones I use have another history to them," she explains. "I love that with every stone there's already a human history and there's also a geologic history."

For "Sentient Forms," she was inspired by the tranquility and aesthetic of the Ryoan-ji garden, but wanted to incorporate the history of the giant stones she found. This site-specific installation features a large, old stone that was uniquely shaped by the rushing water of a river. According to Turk, she was drawn to this stone particularly because of the visible markings of its life and history. In the installation, the stone is placed in the heart of a carved river, made of wood, paper and lights. The river shows the life of the water, and how the rock became shaped that way. Multiple intricate grid sculptures also are in the rush of the fabricated river, and one grid sits calmly on the backside of the large stone. The grids, detailed and meticulously carved, but calm and poised in their placement, gently hug the large stone from the back or the water, depending on the grid.

"I love how, when you approach this side, you can just feel the thousands and thousands of years of water that hit this rock, to make this to carve this; then these grids, will be kind of suspended and kind of tottering in that calm of the other side, and somehow for me, that was a nice allegory."

This body of work, like many of her others is inspired by the fascinating and tumultuous relationship between humankind and nature. Humans often try to shape their own world, trying desperately to change their surroundings by excessively exerting control over natural forces. "The concept is really the same in all the work," she says, "these really beautiful stones -- whether they're carved by marble, carved by wind or carved by water -- are juxtaposed with this intense human-effort to control nature. I love the contrast."

Luckily, the Art + Nature festival is the perfect opportunity for both her and Albuquerque to explore their feelings about that relationship. This exhibit is a milestone for the museum. Though the museum has had star-studded exhibits in the past, this will be the first site-specific solo show at the Laguna Art Museum for both Turk and Albuquerque. Turk says she hopes that Laguna will grow to be an artistic annex from her studio space in Santa Ana, and that this work will continue to live near the coast, evoking an ongoing conversation about the life of the material, the concepts behind her work and the relationship between humankind and nature.

Like her beloved Southern California home, her work is strong and fluid like the waves of our Pacific Ocean; there is an energy embodied in her work that recalls the elegant yet brash and honest coastline, seducing its viewers with the delicate beauty and resilience inherent in its core.

Her process of creation is instinctual, she spends endless hours contemplating, arranging, sketching, and re-arranging every choice in her work. One can see the energy and effort in her final product, true intention and deliberate artistic decisions. Though her studio at the Chiarini Marble & Stone yard is chaotic and cramped, her home is sleek and spacious, nestled on the edge of the wetlands in Newport. Bright and empty with only artwork to fill the space, she keeps little areas of collected stones from her travels, comparing them and relating them to one another, tracking their lives. She moves back and forth between the two spaces during the brainstorming of her process.

Two of the four rooms Turk will occupy at the Laguna Art Museum show will be dedicated to her process -- mapping her creative journey and inspiration across the rooms, on the walls and throughout the spaces. She geeks out about theories of matter and connectivity between humankind and nature, and tracks different theories, understandings and exploration in science and art in these rooms. "It's about the emptiness of matter -- " Turk explains, "what is matter, physically and throughout time...So it takes you through gems, stones, calcium -- through its history. Kind of like an investigation, flowing people through the history of my inspiration with stone."

Turk approaches her stonework from a place of inquisition and geology more than artistry in some ways. "All the stone I use is marble because it's human-like; it's life. I'm trying to find that vital link, and connect it to a larger dialogue without banging people over the head with it. It's just in the fabric of our humanity, and I'm sort of bringing it back a little bit here."
Though Turk's work is abstract, the theories and feelings that are explored during her process often shine through the finished product. The delicacy and meticulous sculptures touch on the fabric of life and history of our natural world, evoking deeper thought and contemplation on physical material as well as the relationship we have with the natural world. Turk's artwork has been a catalyst for many other artists to test the boundaries of their materials, and with this partnered exhibition with Lita Albuquerque, the investigative, theoretical and ethereal aspects of her work are made more powerful.

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Top Image: Sculpture by Elizabeth Turk | Photo by Eric Stoner

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Posted The Avant-Garde at the Orange County Museum of Art to Artboundtag:www.kcet.org,2014:/arts/artbound//1834.761822014-10-02T08:00:00Z2014-10-28T18:36:00ZOCMA's exhibition "The Avant-Garde Collection" examines the ever-evolving definition of avant-garde as it is represented through their permanent collection.Evan Sennhttp://www.kcet.org/cgi-bin/mt/mt-cp.cgi?__mode=view&blog_id=1834&id=6312
Avant-garde movements throughout art history have tried to define and redefine the concepts embodied by contemporary art. From the Dadaists in the early 1900s to the street artists in the 1980s, avant-garde art has been an important foundation of accepted rebellion in the practice of art.

In Orange County Museum of Art's recent exhibition "The Avant-Garde Collection," the museum takes a look at the ever-evolving definition of avant-garde as it is represented through their permanent collection. Curator Dan Cameron finds it a fascinating study into the state of mind of contemporary artists within each limited era of art; from cubism and abstract expressionism to pop art, performance art and installation work. Avant-garde artists often are inspired by the artwork and movements that have come before them, and use the past as fuel to react in direct opposition to what has come before. Looking back on the momentous works of art from any important avant-garde movement, one can find significant and interesting visual relationships between the previous movements and the cutting edge reactionary work that follow.

"Avant-garde communicates nothing at all about the quality of the work over time, nor does it adhere to any style or movement," Cameron states, "providing a sound reason for why one should probably avoid describing the permanent collection of an art museum as essentially avant-garde." And yet, OCMA has come into possession of over 100 or so works that are inarguably avant-garde at the time of the creation, regardless of how favored they may or may not be, looking back at them. Cameron says that these works depict a decisive break with an existing order of representation and technique, placing the maker at the forefront of contemporary art of his/her time, and shifting the "avant-garde burden onto the shoulders of a new generation."

"The Avant-Garde Collection" exhibition is designed in somewhat of a chronological order, starting in the early 1900s with a painting by a Los Angeles native, Stanton MacDonald-Wright, one of the forefathers of Synchromism, an abstraction-based movement surrounding color theory. MacDonald-Wright worked with many Southern California artists through his work in the WPA program, including Hans Guztav Burkhardt, Richards Ruben and Jay DeFeo -- all of whom are also exhibited in the first part of the exhibition at OCMA.

The collection has a thorough timeline exhibited through its acquisitions, and takes special attention to illustrate large and small shifts between inspiration and motivation between artists and movements. The 1950s brought the genius of Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg to the avant-garde limelight, whose abstraction and figurative work set the stage for a number of reactionary cutting edge movements that followed.

"The Avant-Garde Collection" shows strength in its presentation of California's 1950s and 60s artwork, including early Light and Space works, pop art, and conceptual works from this time period. Key players of this time period, like John Baldessari, Larry Bell, and Craig Kaufamn were present, along with lesser-known artists. Southern California earned its place in the art world around this time, bringing a serious yet distinctly California style to the larger art scene, and redefining, yet again, what avant-garde is.

In the 1970s and 1980s, Robert Irwin, Ed Kienholz and Chris Burden represented the cutting edge and genre-defining artwork coming out of California, though all very different in aesthetics. California's art scene was growing to be rival that of New York during this time, though with a different style all together, according to Hunter Drohojowska-Philp, author of Rebels in Paradise: The Los Angeles Art Scene and the 1960s. Drohojowska-Philp talked to public radio in 2011 about her book, and further supported that this time period was pertinent to placing L.A. on the art world map. L.A. and O.C.'s art scenes embodied a relaxed and vibrant mood, inspired and unique, in this new creative mecca. "I really was struck by the boldness of their decision to stay in Los Angeles when they could have gone to New York, and the way they all felt -- they couldn't grow and do what they needed to do for themselves as artists, in New York," Drohojowska-Philp said. "They needed the freedom and the permission of Los Angeles, where there were few galleries and collectors and no museum. There was no infrastructure, so they could do what they wanted."

Avant-garde art has been made in Los Angeles since the early 20th century -- though we may forget that fact looking at contemporary art today. Its classification under the category of avant-garde takes time to reflect on. In the film The Cool School, focuses on a small group of influential artists of the 1950s and 1960s in Los Angeles, surrounding one particular art institution, the Ferus Gallery. The artists involved in the Ferus Gallery are still some of the most influential and innovative artists in California art history -- many of whom are also exhibited in OCMA's "The Avant-Garde Collection."

According to renowned theorist and famed art critic Clement Greenberg, in his most famous essay on avant-garde and kitsch from the published essay, "Avant-Garde and Kitsch" in the Parisian Review in 1939, avant-garde is constantly only in search of one thing, absolute. "It has been in search of the absolute that the avant-garde has arrived at 'abstract' or 'nonobjective' art -- and poetry, too. The avant-garde poet or artist tries in effect to imitate God by creating something valid solely on its own terms, in the way nature itself is valid, in the way a landscape -- not its picture -- is aesthetically valid; something given, increate, independent of meanings, similars or originals," he explains. Greenberg was the first to define avant-garde (and kitsch) with social and historical context, though he would not be the last. With an ever-evolving definition, avant-garde's only consistency is its inconsistency.

OCMA has been programming exhibitions on boundary-pushing artwork for decades. In 2007, they produced an exhibit called "Birth of the Cool: California Art, Design and Culture at Midcentury," which focused heavily on the "Cool School" artists and the rise in popularity of edgy modern art in Southern California art scenes. However, in 1976 they also approached the topic of the Ferus Gallery and its avant-garde modernists in "The Last Time I Saw Ferus" at OCMA (then the Newport Harbor Art Museum).

Christopher Knight noted the Ferus Gallery as being "the first professional space in L.A. to be principally devoted to the postwar California avant-garde," he stated in an article from the Los Angeles Times in 2008, "...the gallery introduced the work of major L.A. artists."

This gallery was the only institution at the time to give attention to this kind of art and these kind of artists, but it wasn't before long that the larger L.A. scene and other art scenes across the country took note of these rebellious and curious artists as well. California's leading moment in art history was this era in art--a straddling time period that played with modernism, messed with new wave ideas on politics and consumerism, and dove deep into the conceptual backbone of artistic expression as a whole.

At the same time as many artists like Ed Kienholz, Ed Ruscha and Robert Irwin (among others) developed works in a minimalist, light and space heyday, artist Tony DeLap was making a parallel shift to fetish finish in Northern California, just before moving down south to Orange County.

"Like his fellow Californians," art critic Peter Frank wrote in a 2007 article for Art Ltd. Magazine, "DeLap grew up in and inhabits an environment in which materials, not ideas, are most readily at hand--and, ironically enough, illusions, not objects, are the result."

DeLap's work is known as part of the fetish finish era of minimalist art, and came to be a part of the SoCal art scene in 1965. During the 1950s and 1960s, DeLap practiced freelance graphic design while applying his talents at painting and sculptures. In fact, it was during his time as a freelancer, that he started making portable sculpture, and focusing on the temporal, exploring the notion that the idea that was more important than the object. DeLap's particular spin on that notion was to push the illusion more than the idea, over physical object.

DeLap has been featured in numerous solo and group exhibitions, and he enjoyed an extensive retrospective at OCMA in late 2000 to early 2001. He was also included in "Best Kept Secret: UCI the Development of Contemporary Art in Southern California, 1964-1971" at Laguna Art Museum from October 2011 to January 2012 and had a large retrospective exhibition at Oceanside Museum of Art last year entitled "TONY DELAP: SELECTIONS FROM 50 YEARS."

Peter Frank pinpoints DeLap's momentum and specific draw through the minimalist vantage point as helping to shape the rhetoric of minimalist art through his subtle illusion and creativity through finish and form. "DeLap's perceptualism...allows no truth but rather (as Stephen Colbert might say) an optical truthiness. In providing the eye a fun house ride of subtly shifted planes, suddenly disappearing supports, and transformed shapes, DeLap's tweaking deflates the pretensions of Abstract Expressionism and the rhetoric of Minimalism," he wrote in the same article from Art Ltd. Magazine in 2007.

In the exhibition catalog, The Avant-Garde Collection, Cameron states that "there is no longer an avant-garde today, but there might be multiple avant-gardes operating side by side, each one disrupting the accepted parameters of art-making just enough to cause a slight tremor, a shudder in the status quo..." The exhibition takes an insightful look at what avant-garde means in a larger context our art history, from the earliest years of California art history to our larger art scene now, with a thoughtful and inquisitive eye.

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Top Image: Eraser by Vija Celmins, 1967

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Posted Valley Vista: The Artists of the San Fernando Valley to Artboundtag:www.kcet.org,2014:/arts/artbound//1834.754952014-08-28T08:00:00Z2014-12-24T02:39:52ZA new retrospective exhibition highlights the art history of the San Fernando Valley from 1970-1990.Evan Sennhttp://www.kcet.org/cgi-bin/mt/mt-cp.cgi?__mode=view&blog_id=1834&id=6312
Pop culture has cast "The Valley" as many roles over the years, helping to create a distinct identity for this area in the hearts and minds of the masses -- often referring to this area being full of vapid teenagers, porn stars, shopaholics, clueless WASPs, track housing and style-devoid dweebs. Movies like "Valley Girl," "Earth Girls Are Easy," "Foxes," "Encino Man," "Boogie Nights," and "Clueless" have pushed the stereotypes of the Valley further into our subconscious, solidifying a misconception of this large part of Los Angeles. Even musician Frank Zappa expressed distaste for the Valley in his 1982 hit, "Valley Girl." In reality, the Valley is a wealth of cultural diversity, important art, and music. Existing as the truest suburb in the sprawling metropolis of L.A., the art and culture to come out of this area is often overlooked.

Now, the San Fernando Valley is now getting some much deserved attention in the light of art history. "Valley Vista: Art in the San Fernando Valley, CA. 1970-1990" is one of the first retrospective survey exhibitions focusing on the important art and artists that came out of this area during this pivotal time in local art history. Loyola Marymount University Art history professor Dr. Damon Willick was raised in the Valley and he curated the exhibition at California State University Northridge's art gallery, which runs until October 11, 2014.

"It all started with the joke, when I was walking through the PST exhibitions, and I would ask where the 'Vals' were," Willick jokes. From that point, Willick spent two years researching and reaching out to find more artists and movements who were connected to this important part of the Valley's art history.

Willick documents the history of the Valley briefly in the exhibition catalog and book accompanying "Valley Vista," and notes important movements in the area's history as it pertains to the local art movements. "I think the Valley is often overlooked or stereotyped, because, in a way, it tells us something about Los Angeles that maybe Los Angeles doesn't want to know about itself," Willick says.

With a population of nearly two million people and 34 neighborhoods, according to the 2012 U.S. Census, the San Fernando Valley is a huge portion of Los Angeles County, nearly half of it on a map, and one of the largest cities in the United States. The Valley's population is predominantly Latino (with 42 percent of the total population) with Caucasians following close behind and Asian-Americans filling 13 percent, according to the Los Angeles Times. The Valley's core population is also between the ages of 19-34, making this area an ideal demographic area for creativity and economic growth--that's a large chunk of the greater Los Angeles area that's often left out of the L.A. conversation.

L.A. annexed the Valley in 1915, following the opening of William Mulholland's Los Angeles Aqueduct that helped bring water down from the Owens Valley to L.A. right through the San Fernando Valley. The Aqueduct is one of the first major contributing factors that helped Los Angeles expand to the thriving metropolis it is today. Willick says that from the moment the aqueduct was opened, the Valley's relationship to L.A. was in service to the city, even though it now comprised a large percentage of the metropolis.

The population in the Valley grew steadily every decade following the aqueduct's creation by nearly double, and by the 1970s, it exceeded one million people thanks to the influx of job opportunities in aerospace, film and automotive industries. But with the larger number of people steadily moving into the Valley to escape the escalating housing costs of Los Angeles, culture grew in the Valley as well.

The story of the Valley may not be as glamorous as the greater Los Angeles, but Willick says that he was influenced by the way PST looked at regional art, and thought it'd be the perfect time to explore the valley's rich history in art as well. "It's not really a heroic narrative, and I think that PST has created a narrative of Los Angeles that is really great undoubtedly, but it told a story that was extraordinary, and I'm looking at a part of Los Angeles that could be described as ordinary," Willick says.

"Valley Vista" highlights the fine details in the history of Valley art that only locals might know. Between the 1930s and the 1960s, architecture and artistic sub-cultures quietly gained momentum in the area, rivaling its neighboring creative activity of Los Angeles. Artistic minds like Richard Neutra and Frank Ehrenthal helped shape the architectural landscape of the Valley with visionary mid-century buildings and ornate neon signage, while more eclectic visionaries like Daniel Can Meter, John Ehn, and Esteban Bojorquez brought an artistic flare to the Valley's love of architecture with structural, quirky, accessible art.

In the late 1950s, art galleries started opening and universities and colleges began popping up across the Valley landscape. In 1958, the Orlando Gallery opened as a part of a dance school, but quickly separated into one of the most progressive art galleries--with a strong foundation in performance-based work--in the city, according to Willick, and remained open until 2011. Another influential gallery, R. Mutt Gallery opened in 1973 and specialized in experimental and sub-genre art forms but only lasted for about five years. The universities in the area, California State University, Northridge, San Fernando Valley State College and Los Angeles Valley College also came up as major contributors in the contemporary Valley art scene. "A big part of the story too, is Cal State Northridge," Willick says. "That is the cultural institution in the Valley. So, part of the exhibition really exposes how great of a university art program that the college has had for years. I think Northridge really should be considered part of that fabric of Los Angeles art scene." The artwork and artists these spaces exhibited were on the cutting edge of contemporary art and contributed meaningful exhibitions for collectors and artists of that time, including early works from notable artists including Judith Baca, Betye Saar and Peter Alexander.

The presence of the many talented artists in the Valley was enough sway to occasionally bring L.A. traffic over the hill, but more importantly, because many of these great artists were involved in the universities, they were influencing whole generations with their intellect, unique perspectives, creativity and artwork. "The Valley was a unique environment for contemporary art, and yet viewed by the broader L.A. art world as insignificant and unworthy of attention," Willick says. Willick, a native of the San Fernando Valley also notes that the artists during this time were doing their part to help the Valley flourish as an area, and the Valley as a place, with all its mini-malls, institutions, charm and quirk also helped the artists to flourish, shaping their specific perspectives and artwork, which further helped shape this unique area. "'Valley Vista' is a starting point--just one of many histories that can be written--for surveying the Valley and its role in art history, and I am acutely aware of my blind spots," Willick explains. "The Valley is as diverse and complicated as the greater Los Angeles area; just as there is not one LA, there are multiple Valleys and, thus, multiple art histories of the place."

"Who we are emerges partly from the places where we live," Willick elaborates, "yet, the definition of place is constantly shifting."

In the 1970s and 1980s, to some, the suburban mis-imagined utopia of the Valley seemed to turn a corner and the perception of it changed too. As though lingering in the background, slowly decaying, the idea of the "Main Street U.S.A.," with the white picket fence of the suburbs was no longer the perceived truth about the Valley. Looking back, it seems that the burgeoning artwork during that time reflected a more realistic truth; a kind of seedy, urbanized, shamble of consumer-based landscape, full of mini-malls and liquor stores. There have been many artists and musicians to hate on the Valley, with movies, music and popular culture references all degrading the area to an unimportant wasteland of consumerism and stale life, Willick even cites critic Dave Hickey's dismissal of the Valley as a "'smoggy sprawl of quotidian American Arcadia;" and its culture as limited to "fast-food signage, assorted miracles of low-rider engineering, and the translucent dreams that waft off the Universal lots;" and concluding that it was the place "where authenticity comes to die."

"There's a sort of elitist distaste of the middle class," Willick explains. "I think also part of it is that stereotypes are also based on partial truths; it's a pretty easy target when it is so sprawled and it is an example of suburban urban planning gone awry. But what I would argue is that a lot of Los Angeles has similar aesthetic and sprawl and pollution."

Willick says that many critics thought that the Valley served as an example of the demonization of suburbanization to the point of excess, but it was just an easy target. It often was used as the butt of jokes, "for its profligate sprawl, kooky architecture, unhip telephone area code and home-grown porn industry, as well as for that mythical tribe of nasal-toned, IQ-challenged teen-aged girls who like to shop," writes historian Kevin Roderick, in his book, "The San Fernando Valley: America's Suburb."

The "Valley Vista" exhibition has a strong selection of works ranging from photography, installation, drawings, book art, body art documentation and sculpture and painting, covering some of the most significant artists based in that area in the 1970s and '80s. Some of the monumental artists in "Valley Vista" include non-conforming installation artist Esteban Bojorquez, boundary-pushing contemporary photographer John Divola, ground-breaking performance artist Jeffrey Vallance, and many more. "That's really the point of the exhibition -- trying to open up what Los Angeles is and what Los Angeles art is and was," Willick says.

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Posted Pink Helmet Posse: Future Skater Stars to Artboundtag:www.kcet.org,2014:/arts/artbound//1834.743082014-08-19T08:00:00Z2014-10-28T18:36:11ZThe Orange County/San Diego-based, all-girl skate crew Pink Helmet Posse wants to change the way girls are treated in skateboarding.Evan Sennhttp://www.kcet.org/cgi-bin/mt/mt-cp.cgi?__mode=view&blog_id=1834&id=6312
While women are underrepresented in action sports today, the numbers have improved greatly in the past two decades. Though action sports are some of the newest in sporting history, the fanatical cult following for these sports is monumental and ever-increasing. Women are a fast-growing demographic in skateboarding, surfing, snowboarding and BMX biking, yet their male counterparts outnumber them. Some women in action sports have to fight to be taken seriously in this male-dominated arena. But that could change. The Orange County/San Diego based all-girl skate crew, Pink Helmet Posse, aims to re-calibrate the young sports world and perhaps change the way girls are treated in skateboarding.

Bella Kenworthy, Rella "Relz" Murphy, and Sierra Kerr make up the core of the Pink Helmet Posse. Other than their 15 year old mentor Jordyn Barrat, they're all under 10 years old. But there is a mission driving their madness: encourage more girls to get on the board.

Bella, Relz and Sierra first started skating together because of a coincidence: they all wore the same color helmet. Their friendship led to regular practices together. Then with the help of their dads, they now swarm the skate parks with their families, adding new members to their team each weekend. "We skate together sometimes, but mostly it's just us three," seven-year-old Bella says. "We're kind of all the same [level], but Jordyn is better because she's the oldest." Their camaraderie has helped them become better skaters, mastering tricks and skills as a supported group, and has also helped them battle the competitive boys at the skate parks.

"That's kind of how they got so good, they pushed each other," Bella's mom Sarah says. "When one of them wanted to do something new, the others wanted to learn it too. It was just a constant support network they built for themselves."

When Bella's father Jason Kenworthy created a website for them and an Instagram too, their humble endeavor began to gain traction outside Southern California. A short documentary on the Posse was made by Ben Mullinkosson and Kristelle Laroche from Chapman University. "The Pink Helmet Posse" (2013) was nominated for Best Documentary Short at the 2014 Tribeca Film Festival, and toured through a few other film festivals as well.

Gnarly in Pink by The New York Times

Even at the young age of seven, Bella, Relz and Sierra are no strangers to discrimination from the skater boys in the area. "They've definitely gotten some guff from the boys. I feel like boys are always kind of hard on them," Sarah explains, "but they're getting tougher, they're learning to stand up for themselves."

"Boys can be mean to us; sometimes they snake me," Bella says.

Gender-separated sports has its roots in the Industrial Revolution. While the "nature of women" was debated by the bourgeois Victorian upper class, so was their place in the new inventions of leisure time and sporting for entertainment. Often, women were encouraged to perpetuate the delicate, "porcelain-doll" woman standard; the woman whose job was to look good, rear children and be attentive to her husband as to show off his wealth and her fertility. This also excluded women from participating in sports. That social stigma on women's propriety and exclusion from sports lasted for nearly a century.

In the 1960s, skateboarding and surfing took off like a viral epidemic among the youth cultures, for men and women both. In 1965, Pattie McGee even made the cover of Life magazine, doing a handstand on her board. Women remained in the skateboarding scene as an important minority for years. But the advertising and media focus within this sport very rarely focused on the women's skill at skateboarding. Instead the focus was often in a hyper-sexualized, passive "groupie" role. In the 1970s and 80s, skate parks were closing down and advertisers and companies began to consolidate their financial energy, honing in their attention on the young male and straying away from the female skater, surfer, and rider.

In the 1990s and early 2000s, female skateboarders, BMX bikers and surfers were able to utilize some of the burgeoning technologies in online videos and blogs to help expand their support network, though larger companies and media outlets ignored this demographic. Now, though the X Games -- the world's largest competitive action sporting event -- only 33 of the 192 competitors were women.

In response to these odds, the Pink Helmet Posse seeks to inspire other girls to pursue their dreams of skateboarding professionally.

Six-year-old Ryann Cannon, practices in a big bowl with her dad while Bella and Relz are taking their turn on the big ramps, trying to catch some air and do some tricks. Bella's favorite tricks, "Disasters" and "Smiths," are not easy for most seven-year-olds, but Bella says she's committed to sports; loves to travel; and hang with her posse. She skates through the bowls and on the ramps without anyone's help or coaching. There isn't even a trace of fear on her face. When she was a little younger, her mother says she learned that doubting oneself in skating wasn't just an esteem issue; Bella could get hurt if she didn't trust her instincts on her deck. "Bella got a concussion from second guessing herself," her mom says. But watching her skate now, without fear or doubt -- Bella seems to have learned to believe in herself. She's been skating since she was five, and says she wants to compete in the X Games for skating and surfing soon. "I practice skateboarding every day," she says. "Well, sometimes I take a day off."

While the Pink Helmet Posse is based around these five girls who like to skate, the young skaters aren't quite aware of the impact of their fast-moving troupe. They are breaking gender stereotypes and perhaps encouraging new generations of girls across the world, showing them that anyone can kick-ass if they want, even in pink.

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Posted The Imperfect Perfection of Fatemeh Burnes to Artboundtag:www.kcet.org,2014:/arts/artbound//1834.745412014-08-04T08:00:00Z2014-10-28T18:32:44ZIranian-American artist Fatemeh Burnes creates abstract artworks that mingle in a realm of existential self reflection.Evan Sennhttp://www.kcet.org/cgi-bin/mt/mt-cp.cgi?__mode=view&blog_id=1834&id=6312
Small stature, long hair, a big smile and a burst of fresh energy waft through every room artist and curator Fatemeh Burnes waltzes through. With a gentle demeanor and a keen eye for detail, Iranian-American Burnes has made Southern California her home for over 30 years now, and has since become a regular name in the SoCal art scene. Hypnotic, bright and complex, her abstract artworks mingle in a realm of existential self reflection and chaotic, seemingly organic life forms or refractions. Having been exhibited locally, nationally and internationally, Burnes has received great recognition and critical feedback in many well respected publications and has had two books of her work published. Her most recent exhibit, "Water Works" at the Porch Gallery in Ojai is an apt setting for her tumultuous and evocative art works.

The Porch Gallery is an unassuming cottage-style gallery that is really a mecca for fascinating art in the tiny, creative downtown area of Ojai. "Water Works" is an exhibit that plays on the notion of fluidity and life. A group exhibit featuring some stellar artists like Kio Griffith, Kirk Pedersen, Karrie Ross, Dark Bob and more, this exhibit focuses on the natural force of water-based mediums and fluid aspects of life. Using the fluidity of the materials and themes in this show, Burnes explores her abstract and organic looking creations even further, pushing the boundaries of the concept and material uses of liquids in her work.

The abstraction in her work borders on the familiar--with just hints and touches of humanity mixed in with her fantastical investigations of the unseen and unknown. Much of her work is rooted in identity--having migrated here to Southern California from Tehran in the 1970s, her contemplative work naturally revolves around the idea of self, and what that means in an ever-evolving cultural hot pot like L.A. and SoCal as a whole.

The liquid theme works well with Burnes' art, not just visually but also thematically. In many different media, she often utilizes an investigatory process to pursue a strong fascination with contemplation, growth, connection and humanity--without representational aspects to push the viewer to any one concept or narrative. In her piece, "Self-Speculation II" in "Water Works," the tight and chaotic messes shift around the light and hazy composition of shapes and colors, gently pushing through a residue of liquid invasion and small celestial fields. The work is organic and synthetic at the same time, finding that ever-so-sweet frenzy in one another, constantly battling and bewildering each other into a perfect composition, evoking reflection that borders on doubt.

"Imperfect Geometry II" and "Imperfect Geometry III" take a more organized avenue toward introspection, with more atmospheric properties; she mixes Futurist, Minimalist and Cubist styles in these water-stained and chaotically comforting pieces, helping the viewer to find the balance in imbalance.

Burnes has been a prominent curator and well respected professor of art, design and art history at many local Southern California universities. She runs the art gallery at Mt. San Antonio College, and has been there since 1992, curating over 100 exhibitions. She also has work in "Trans-Angeles," a traveling exhibition curated by Peter Frank for the Wilhelm-Morgner-Haus in Germany. The show is designed to highlight the distinctive paradigm that L.A. artists think and work, drawing on both personal experience and Southern California's variety of cultural and natural phenomena and the natural experimental nature of L.A. artists. Unlike many other contemporary artists, she doesn't throw her work at every person she meets, and yet her constant presence in the art world is impressive and intimidating. She is a patient and thoughtful artist who often questions the hard to pin-down aspects of this world, and explores the more complex realities than those on the surface.

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Top Image: Self-Speculation II by Fatemeh Burnes, on view at Porch Gallery.

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Posted The Expanding Art Scene of Santa Ana to Artboundtag:www.kcet.org,2014:/arts/artbound//1834.738272014-07-03T08:00:00Z2014-12-31T22:08:10ZIn the past few years, entrepreneurs and artists have been expanding the arts scene of Santa Ana to reach beyond the limits of the historic Artists Village, and into The East End. Evan Sennhttp://www.kcet.org/cgi-bin/mt/mt-cp.cgi?__mode=view&blog_id=1834&id=6312
Since the 1980s, Santa Ana has been the art destination for Orange County, attracting artists, art lovers and art professionals to the area. Just adjacent to the bustling, predominantly Latino 4th Street area, the Artists Village was somewhat isolated from the rest of the city. For a long time, downtown Santa Ana was thought to one of the most dangerous cities in the state of California. With high crime and homicide rates, the Artists Village in the heart of the city was a secluded destination for art-tourists. In the past five-to-ten years, the Village has been flooded with bars, restaurants and boutiques, the art has taken a bit of a backseat, which has led to entrepreneurs and artists to expand the "art destination" of Santa Ana to reach beyond the limits of the historic Artists Village, and into The East End.

The Santiago Art District is a burgeoning area in the east end of Santa Ana that holds a handful of small independent galleries showing a wide range of contemporary art and artists. Though these galleries are built-in to the Santiago Lofts, there are some talented artists that come through these spaces. This particular area of Santa Ana hosts their own art walk on the 2nd Saturday of each month, giving Santa Ana visitors an alternative night to check out worthwhile art, without the business of the first Saturday art walk in the Artists Village. Some great spaces in this area include F+ Gallery and Curbside Gallery.

Jack Jakosky recently opened the Logan Creative Center, near the train station and the Santiago Arts District, and turned a spiral staircase production facility into a multi-use art center with a paint booth, major wood, metal and glass equipment, a small retail space, and over a dozen different artists' studios. Jakosky has been able to attract some well respected artists and some up-and-comers to make the Logan Creative Center a well-rounded center for contemporary artists to make work and have a community and network. The Logan Creative Center currently houses world famous sculptor Elizabeth Turk, well known metal sculptor Bret Brice, amongst many others. Jakosky hopes to get visitors to see that Santa Ana has more to offer than just the Artists Village.

Marcas Contemporary Art (MCA) is another new art space in the east end of Santa Ana that is trying to broaden the art in this colorful community. Co-owners Dana Jazayeri and Ale Astoquilca own Orange County's only independent art and design book store As-Issued as well as a boutique called Lobby in the famed anti-mall, The Lab in Costa Mesa. As-Issued is well known for their great selection of art-minded books and zines, and they also have small contemporary art exhibitions in the space. As-Issued is about the size of a large closet, making Jazayeri keen on branching out and find another space to expand and improve their art programming for quite some time now. A few months ago, Jazayeri threw a pop-up graffiti art show in an open warehouse in Santa Ana and the reception and attendance was far beyond they anticipated. This gave Jazayeri the confidence and motivation to finally get a new space in the Santa Ana area dedicated to great artwork permanently. Jazayeri and Astoquilca teamed up with well known Los Angeles pop surrealist painter Steven Daily to open Marcas Contemporary Art.

The name, Marcas Contemporary Art, is taken from the tradition of Jazayeri's
Astoquila has faith that they will be able to not only offer art to visitors and collectors that isn't available anywhere else in OC, but that with their combined experience and points-of-view, the three owners are able to really hone in and make MCA the art space Santa Ana needs. "DJ has been working with artists for over ten years, and Steven has worked with artists for a lot longer in a different capacity," she says. "I think it's going to be good. It's kind of new, and different from what you're used to so and I think it'll be good for this area."

"With As-Issued -- it's just a small little book store," Jazayeri says. "The old gallery I had, Subject Matter, was like 2200 square feet. So, it's hard to implement larger ideas in the small space, and we've been doing pop-ups here and there, but we just felt the need to move forward and bring something larger to Santa Ana. I like Santa Ana; I like locations with a lot of character. In Orange County, it's kind of hard to find that."

"We want to help this area become more of a destination," Astoquilca says. "I think it is fun to help build a community like that too. You know, there are so many places that have that, so with all of 4th Street changing the way it is, I think it's a great thing. You have boutiques, food, and a lot of different things you can do -- having the gallery here is great, it adds another component to giving people something to do here, and inspire and invigorate their lives through art."

MCA will officially open July 5, 2014 with a large group show, "Corrective Course." Jazayeri says that they plan on having a plethora of different kinds of programming, including tutorials, seminars, solo shows, group exhibits, fundraisers and more. "For the inaugural show, we picked artists in each genre, and we picked artists that could represent it the best -- not everyone we were hoping for was able to participate. But we want to have fun with it. We have over 40 artists," Jazayeri says.

Of the many artists that will be contributing to "Corrective Course," local Orange County low brow artist Gustavo Rimada is included. Rimada will be in great company, surrounded by the likes of Alex Garcia, Dan Quintana, Nikko Hurtado, Adrian Dominic, Karen Hsiao, Shawn Barber, Olivia, Travis Louie, Cryptik, Amir H. Fallah, Sylvia Ji and many more.

Rimada, originally from Mexico, grew up in Indio, but now lives in Orange County and works out of Goodfellas Tattoo Studio. His background working in a tattoo shop combined with his art education from The Art Institute in Santa Monica, made for an interesting mix of inspiration for his art practice. His artworks often all upon the traditions of tattoo art, but combined with a clear influence of his Mexican heritage as well. Lots of bones, flowers, haunting eyes and open chest cavities. Rimada plays with religious and cultural symbolism and iconic imagery to create his own brand of new brow art. All of his work, though aspects of his work contain images that may seem familiar, lives in a contemporary realm, somewhere between sub-cultures and traditional fine art.

Another Orange County-based artist MCA is excited about featuring is Colt Bowden. Based out of Brea, Bowden is a sign-painter, typographic street artist, whose work is often about and around skate and surf art and life. His work often involves vintage lettering, linocuts, machinery and bearded gentlemen. Jazayeri says that they will be doing some interesting new public art with Colt, and try to involve and invigorate the area with great custom art.

With a slew of new art centers, spaces and galleries opening up throughout Santa Ana, the notion of the Artists Village is slowly expanding to the entire downtown area as a whole. Santa Ana is slowly becoming the go-to art hub for the county, and may be able to compete more seriously with L.A.'s art scenes in the not-so-distant future.

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Top Image: Artwork by Colt Bowden

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Posted Summer Writing Project: The Next Great Storytellers to Artboundtag:www.kcet.org,2014:/arts/artbound//1834.736502014-06-16T08:00:00Z2014-12-31T22:11:36ZA new program seeks to rebrand libraries, long viewed as places of information consumption, as sites of creation.Evan Sennhttp://www.kcet.org/cgi-bin/mt/mt-cp.cgi?__mode=view&blog_id=1834&id=6312
For some, libraries are houses of sense memory, evoking that musty, nostalgic old book smell, the hushed click-clacking of computer keys, the whispers of friends sharing stories and the great variety and selection of books, young and old, all in one place. While libraries typically encourage information consumption, a new program seeks to rebrand them as sites of creation. The California Public Library System teamed up with Orange County-based Black Hill Press and JukePop to engage the larger public and inspire writers from all walks of life to participate in the new Summer Writing Project.

Both Black Hill Press and JukePop are cheerleaders of often neglected mediums in writing. Black Hill Press fights for the novella -- a distinctive literary form that offers the focus of a short story and the scope of a novel -- while JukePop is reinventing the lost art of serial writing. It's an age-old artform in which writers published one chapter at a time. Authors would receive feedback from their audience, whose opinions would help shape the finished piece. Before the internet age, serials offered an interactive conversation between a writer and readers, and the Summer Writing Project channels this spirit too. The libraries hold an engaged audience for up-and-coming writers, but to compel library members to engage and participate in casting a vote or finding a great new author is a difficult task to manage.

The project presents authors with the opportunity to craft their stories one chapter at a time, with immediate and quality feedback from readers, while also broadcasting their words to an audience eager for the next great writer -- all in one place.

Black Hill Press co-founder Kevin Staniec hopes that this kind of project will not only give undiscovered authors the opportunity to get great exposure, but also to create new connections with libraries and our younger generations of readers. "Ever since I was a kid, my parents would take me to various summer reading programs at our local library," Staniec says. "I remember being dropped off early every morning at that castle of books, I remember stories of adventure and mystery, and I remember returning home at the end of the day only to recreate those characters in my backyard. It was magical. We are trying to create new memories with public libraries by inviting people to write and share their stories with an opportunity to have their books distributed to California Public Libraries and possibly published as a Black Hill Press special Summer Writing Project collection with custom cover artwork by Jeannie Phan."

JukePop Founder Jerry Fan has been utilizing contemporary platforms to help authors test out their story ideas serially, and hopes that by involving the libraries in the evolving process of self-publishing, the libraries will create a stronger bond with readers and community members throughout California. "As you know, libraries may not understand the relevance of this self-publishing, independent publishing era, and we want to try and help them do that by putting them front and center, in the process of publishing."

JukePop operates with this contemporary sharing idea at their core. "The name is from a jukebox, the idea that the individual put a vote in, and the entire community benefits," Fan explains. "And pop just stands for the fact that we want to find what's popular, based on quality. That's the whole idea of JukePop--to help authors and publishers to beta-test their stories or submissions."

How JukePop Works:

"Library members are the perfect audience that authors and publishers want to test their books with," Fan says. "But the problem with libraries is that they're always restricted--they can't always deal with all the authors and all the publishers out there that have books they want to throw at them, so they actually need someone to filter the lesser quality works. So they can say here is a list of stories that has passed the first test, and that's what JukePop provides, we kind of test these stories to see if they are of quality, and then offer them up to libraries, for them to offer to the communities--it saves a lot of work."

The Summer Writing Project helps libraries in multiple ways--not just helping them manage the submissions from writers and publishers, but also with fresh, successful electronic content for the libraries as well. Libraries have been operating so well with physical books for such a long time, that even though they have notice the major shift in interest to electronic content, the still haven't been able to keep up with trends. The libraries are constantly looking for ways to get fresh content without having to go through the major publishers or the various layers of middlemen to get their content out to their members, so the Summer Writing Project with JukePop and Black Hill Press is a creative seasonal solution.

"When Kevin and I met originally," Fan explains, "the initial conversation wasn't even about libraries, it was about how a platform can help publishers handle the hundreds of thousands of submission they get, because we have a very simple way for authors to submit their work. We don't' care about who pitched it, we don't care about who you are, we don't care about what your book cover looks like, just give us the first chapter of your story. That's enough to allow us to take a rough pass at whether you're a good writer from a technical perspective, but the plot, the characters, the world, we really let the community figure that out for us, so, in a sense we're crowd-sourcing, and we just filter for the quality of writing, which is a very important tool for publishers. That's when the light bulb clicked."

The Summer Writing Project evolved into a participatory experiment aimed at all writers, but is piggy-backing on local schools' summer reading programs. All students in junior high school, high school and some college students are assigned summer reading lists, and to combat the steady decline in junior high schoolers' and high schoolers' reading levels, the California libraries want to encourage students to maintain their reading and writing level through summer programs like this. But, this project utilizes crowd-sourcing in a way that's never been used in traditional book or novella publishing before, and is a great opportunity for any author.

"When we started sharing the concept behind the Summer Writing Project with friends, authors and publishing colleagues, we started receiving email introductions, phone calls and recommendations for libraries and librarians who would want to get involved," Staniec says. "We never had to pitch the idea, it instantaneously evolved into a conversation and brainstorming of ideas--everyone was already on the same page."

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The libraries are excited to engage the community of readers and writers more with this new program too. Fan says, "the response I keep getting from libraries is--'that's it? There's nothing else I need to do?' "Because our integration platform is actually very simple, and I feel like libraries have been nickel and dimed to death by its proprietors, they say, 'are you charging?' We're like, 'no, it's free.' And it's really that simple. So, you can imagine, something that benefits the community, something that's free to them, something that is reinventing their role in the new publishing era, it's like this trifecta. The interest level has been through the roof."

Want to be the next great storyteller? Write a novella and submit chapters via jukepop anytime between now and August 31, 2014. Black Hill Press will select three novellas to be published as a special collection with custom cover artwork by Jeannie Phan, and selected novellas will also be distributed to partner libraries based on reader analytics (retention, reading time) and presented in conjunction with summer reading programs across the state.

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Posted Michael C. Hsiung: The Jolly Art of a Quirk Master to Artboundtag:www.kcet.org,2014:/arts/artbound//1834.733892014-06-03T08:00:00Z2014-06-06T22:50:01ZFunky and adventurous, Michael C. Hsiung's work captures the appeal of storytelling through portraiture and seriality. Evan Sennhttp://www.kcet.org/cgi-bin/mt/mt-cp.cgi?__mode=view&blog_id=1834&id=6312
The world of Michael C. Hsiung is a simple and carefree realm made up of distinctive lines and humor, unique characters and strange situations; it is full of mermen with impressive facial hair, giant and burly acrobatic creatures that are half man-half animal, unicorn sheep and bearded ladies. His human characters are reminiscent of bizarre Russian nesting dolls, always involving something awkward or hilarious. You've no doubt seen his work, whether it's in on a skateboard or surfboard, your friend's arm in tattoo form or in a fine art exhibition. Hsiung's work offers a refreshing, unpretentious melding of many different styles and genres of art, but is capable of keeping his content and creations light, funny and accessible. East Los Angeles College's Vincent Price Art Museum is hosting a solo exhibit of Hsiung's work in their Hoy Space, bringing the quirky mustached creatures of this local artist to a larger museum setting for all to enjoy.

Often inspired by mythology and folklore, Hsiung enjoys the humor and whimsy he has in life, also in his art work. "I think the humor and playfulness in my art just come from me--in the sense that I'm a goofball. But when I first started making drawings, I was really trying to make those around me laugh," Hsiung says. "Nowadays, I find that humor adds a level to art that can make it accessible, even if it is overt or not. Sometimes the humor I put in is accidental, obvious or subtle."

Hsiung has been drawing strange scenes and characters since his childhood, often stemming from his comic book fascination and his wild imagination. He loves the art of the story more than anything else. When he was little, his artwork usually consisted of ant on ant wars, comic book characters and men battling monsters. Though he had been drawing for as long as he can remember, he never thought he could make a career through his art until after college. Hsiung's sister, Pearl is also creatively inclined, drawn to paint and video as her materials of choice and was included in the "Made in L.A." exhibit in 2012, at the Hammer Museum.

Even with a degree in English Literature, Hsiung was always drawn to create stories using a visual vocabulary, eventually evolving from drawing strange things he saw in the world to creating a complex and comical narrative with sometime just one image or character.

"Being a hyper boy, I was pretty obsessed with cartoons, comics, and dungeons & dragons, growing up," he explains. "It wasn't until I was in college that I started drawing characters, but they were always me and well, I stopped drawing for a long time after that. I think I always got frustrated with not finding a visual vocabulary and topic I felt drawing about. It wasn't untill I started drawing again, in 2007 that I guess I started making characters--mostly men fighting animals at the time."

Out of all the characters Hsiung has brought to life, "the merman fellow" is his favorite. With his strong background in literature, Hsiung often explores mythology and folk lore as well as adding his own unique take on his human-animal hybrid stories. Many of his adventurous inked portraits can tell the viewer so much about a character, just by the accessories and expression of the creatures. Hsiung likes to work serially, creating a larger storyline and life cycle for his characters, and sometimes even finds a way to kill off a character, like his beloved merman, sadly killed by "the drink" along with a dozen or so other mermen, in a large merman-gathering that got out of control--though an occasional merman cameo in newer works is not uncommon.

Hsiung's peculiar caricatures have found their way to the surf and skate industry, as well as magazine cover art, clothing design, commissioned portraits, album covers, book illustrations and even tattoo art. Though Hsiung is not a tattooer himself, his designs are often used as tattoos, whether original, commissioned works, or just copies of his already created characters. "Tattoos are tough commissions, since they're going on someone's body and you always want them just right," says Hsiung. "Some clients have nice clear ideas and some are just totally random and just involve a unicorn--ha. It might just be the ultimate compliment though."

His artwork is almost always on exhibit somewhere. He shows in exhibits throughout L.A. and N.Y. and across the globe, and is currently preparing for four shows this month alone. Starting on June 7, Hsiung will have a solo show at the Vincent Price Museum at East Los Angeles College. The exhibition, "Who Cares Wins!" will feature many different works from Hsiung, including paintings, drawings, prints, tattoos and wood cuts.

In the upcoming show, it's basically a bunch of drawings that have been sitting in a box underneath my bed along with some new paintings I made specifically for the show," Hsiung says. "I've also included works that from various projects I've done, from drawings I did for a company in New Zealand called Blunt Umbrellas to laser wood cut out pieces.

Grumpy Bert in New York City will also have an exhibition of Hsiung's work opening on June 7, downtown L.A.'s Think Tank Gallery will be hosting a group show, Chilled Air, opening on June 21, which will include Hsiung's artwork, and he is also working on a special project for Vice X WB which should be out later this month.

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Top Image: "SEXY SEASHELL" by Michael C. Hsiung.

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Posted The Inked and Bleeding Heart of 'Perseverance' to Artboundtag:www.kcet.org,2014:/arts/artbound//1834.726682014-05-06T08:00:00Z2014-10-01T20:50:20ZThe exhibit "Perseverance" gives insight into the history of Japanese tattooing while also exploring and mimicking the perfection of the Japanese tattoo composition.Evan Sennhttp://www.kcet.org/cgi-bin/mt/mt-cp.cgi?__mode=view&blog_id=1834&id=6312A segment based on this story was produced for KCET's award-winning TV show "SoCal Connected." Watch it here now.

In the world of outsider art, tattooing has the longest and largest history of any other. For centuries, people all over the world have been pricking their skin with pigments and inks for a multitude of culturally significant reasons. Some cultures originally used tattooing as a healing practice, similarly to acupuncture, like with the Neolithic Otzi the Iceman circa 3300 BCE. Other cultures used tattooing as a cultural decoration, signifying what tribe or geographic area they came from, while others used tattooing as a means of punishment and criminal branding. The earliest documentation of tattoos were predominantly found in Asian, Polynesian and African cultures, but now, tattoo art spans the cultural communities of every country in the world, with the largest popularity here in the U.S.

Japan is an area with one of the largest tattoo histories in the world, and its indigenous Ainu people even traditionally sported facial tattoos, which later spread to Polynesians and African cultures. It's difficult to imagine Japan with such an illustrated and supported history in the tattoo world, because in our lifetime, Japan has changed its views on tattoo culture quite a bit. A once illegal art form, only designated for criminals and gangsters, traditional Japanese tattooing is as rigorous and skilled as any other traditional art form, with intense and arduous apprenticeships and technical learning processes.

The Japanese American National Museum (JANM) in downtown Los Angeles' Little Tokyo area has embraced the Japanese tattooing heritage and wants to engage a wider audience with their latest exhibition of Japanese tattoo art in "Perseverance," which prominently features seven masters of Japanese tattooing, but also includes many others.

The Japanese word for perseverance is gaman, which translates directly as "patient suffering" or "endurance with dignity, for a purpose," Takahiro Kitamura, the exhibition's curator, explained. A perfect description for the art of tattoos, this term not only signifies the act of getting a tattoo, but the dedication of the tattoo movement throughout Japan's--and Los Angeles' -- rich history.

"People within the community know that it's actually the last museum we thought would've done something like this, just because there is such a long-standing prejudice against tattoos in Japan," Kitamura said. "So when people came to the United States, they brought that prejudice with them. Especially with the internment and WW2, there is a lot of pressure by the Japanese American community to fit in, or not really rock the boat, or do anything a little strange. Which ironically ties to when Japan opened to the West in the navy era, they didn't want to appear barbaric to the Europeans, so they made tattooing illegal. And when they found out European royalty was coming to the West to request tattoos, they made it legal for non-Japanese but not for the Japanese. So, for the JANM to do it was really progressive, I think Greg Kimura was very brave for doing this. You know, he probably gambled his career on this, but Greg really understands that it's time for change, and also that the Japanese American National Museum, the internment exhibit is so important, without doing more contemporary things and branching out, people won't go to the museum. He took a bold step."

The first literal reference to the term "tattoo" was brought to Europe by the explorer Captain James Cook, when he returned in 1771 from his first voyage to Tahiti and New Zealand. In his narrative of the voyage, he refers to an operation called "tattaw." Before this it had been described as scarring, painting, or staining the skin. Captain Cook set an interesting tradition for navy men that carried through centuries. Sailors brought tattoo culture to the United States, from all over the world, but it wasn't until the early 1900s that American tattoo culture really embraced traditional Japanese tattooing as a major style of tattooing. "Perseverance" exhibition designer Kip Fulbeck attributes much of that popularity to Don Ed Hardy, who used his international connections and interest in traditional Japanese tattooing to bring some of the world's greatest Japanese tattooers to the U.S.

Fulbeck and Kitamura worked tirelessly for two years with newly appointed Director Greg Kimura to create this monumental exhibit at the JANM. Fulbeck's exhibition design gives insight into the history of Japanese tattooing while also exploring and mimicking the perfection of the Japanese tattoo composition. "When you walk in, I want people to think this feels done, this feels like this person finished this. Like when I show people my back piece, they're like 'Oh my god, yeah that's done.' I have a goddess of mercy on my back and I remember I could feel when Horitomo was finished, and he waited, and then he took some time just looking over his work. He then simply dotted the eyes, and then that was it. It almost felt like he brought the goddess to life in those last few additions. That's what I wanted to do, bring the exhibition to life."

Fulbeck and Kitamura both have connections to many of the renowned artists on display in "Perseverance," and both felt it was vital to not only explore the rich history of this cultural tradition, but also to reflect the contemporary fusions and Japanese tattoo culture in L.A. as well.

L.A.'s tattoo history is extensive, with being one of the closest ports to the Japanese and Polynesian islands. Traditionally, sailors would get tattoos when they would dock--partly as a means to express themselves, to document where they had been, what they had accomplished, and partly as a means to identify their bodies as their own. Juniper Ellis, author of "Tattooing the World: Pacific Designs in Print and Skin" says that tattoo art is one of the most fascinating person practices of art, indicating personal values and objections, helping to express individuality and belonging at the same time. "Tattoo is a living practice, an art that is a way of life," Ellis explains. "The patterns embrace the bearer, helping identify the person. In the Pacific that often means working with a well-defined set of motifs to proclaim the bearer's genealogy and connections to the land and its guardians. Outside the Pacific, that often means a highly individualized creation of patterns and meaning. In both cases, the designs offer a way to make meaning and indicate belonging. They mark the interface between the interior and the exterior, and indicate where the sacred and profane emerge, the personal and political intersect."

Long Beach still houses one of California's first tattoo shops, near the Pike, in the port of L.A. Though it has changed owners, it still serves as one of the most notorious shops in tattoo culture, originally called Bert Grimm's World Famous Tattoo, it is now called Kari Barba's Outer Limits. Sailors may have brought tattoos to California as an outsider, criminal and originally negative art form, but the contemporary tattoo culture in California is one of the largest industries and cultures around.

"L.A. is very important--the West Coast as a whole," Kitamura says. "There are only three 'Japan-towns' in the United States, and I'm sure internment and WWII had a lot to do with that but, the standing ones are San Francisco, San Jose and Los Angeles. And L.A.'s Little Tokyo is the largest one. Plus, you have all these different kinds of tattoos in L.A.; you have all these Japanese nationals and ex-pats that live and work in L.A. creating authentic Japanese work here, and I think also L.A.--and the West Coast in general (not counting Hawaii)--is the closest point for Asian culture to come over. So it makes sense that we would have a stronger connection to Japan. L.A. is a cultural melting pot and a culture of fusion. It's funny because you have L.A. brands like Japangeles, brands like Lost Tokyo, and that says something right there. Those two brands alone speak volumes about the vibe in L.A."

As a melting pot, L.A. is home to all kinds of fusion, and in tattoos, the traditions of Japanese tattooing techniques, style, composition and imagery mix and mesh with Chicano culture more than any other. "There's a long history of this kind of Chicano-Japanese fusion, and I think L.A. is a cultural melting pot, and we're just showing how other cultures are adopting Japanese style artwork, modifying it to meet their cultural needs and what not, and I think that's what happens across the world. Many cultures borrow and fuse with other cultures," Kitamura explains.

Chicano tattoo culture in L.A. has grown its own style and aesthetic over the years, often fusing with other cultural tattoo work, including Polynesian, American traditional, Japanese and Celtic. In the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s many tattoo styles in L.A. often revolved around criminal culture, often gang-affiliated, but in recent years, L.A.'s tattoo scene has widen its contextual themes as well as its demographics. Even face tattoos, often seen in the '80s and '90s in gang culture--borrowed from traditional Maori and Ainu peoples--now appeals to many alternative youth cultures as decorative additions.

The criminal connotation of tattoos is still heavily prevalent in Japan, with association of Japanese tattooing with the Yakuza mob. Fulbeck and Kitamura both value the importance of de-stigmatizing the Japanese understanding of the tradition of tattooing, but felt it was important to include all aspects of the rich Japanese history of tattoos, including the Yakuza tattoo traditions. "Did I photograph yakuza for this show? Yes, of course I did. But, that's a very, very small percentage," Fulbeck says. "I also photographed professors, engineers, police officers, mothers and fathers. We didn't want to judge our clients, but to focus on the work. I feel like I am a canvas of Horitomo's work; it's not about me, it's about his work on my body."

We see a mainstreaming of tattoo culture present in many cultures and geographical locations like L.A. the growth of tattoo popularity and mainstreaming parallels that of street art's resurgence in recent years. Kitamura's choice of Chaz Bojorquez for the exhibition logo design was purposeful and relevant to this parallel. "My decision to have Chaz Bojorquez to do the lettering--there were some people that were like 'Well, why Chaz? He's not Japanese, and he's not a tattooer.' He's a lettering master, he was born and raised in L.A., he has a longstanding history in L.A., and if you know Chaz's work, you know that all his lettering stems from Japanese calligraphy," Kitamura explains. "If you look at a lot of his letters, to me, when I look at a lot of his letters I see Bonji Sanskrit--that sort of stroke power, that sort of elegance. I thought that Chaz's role being an L.A. native and being an outsider artist was important. When you look at graffiti, they've gone through a similar thing as tattooing."

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Street art has had an easier journey into mainstream art world, in part due to its accessibility. "They've been more successful in the museum area, because you sell a painting, you can sell a canvas--you can't really sell a finished tattoo piece of work, even a tattoo photo is very easy to replicate," Kitamura elaborates. "I think the fine art world's issue with tattooing is that they don't know how to market it, they can't make money on it and they can't promote it. But we watched as urban street art changed from gang-related temporary street tags, and we've seen that come full circle to where Chaz's paintings are going for $30,000-40,000 in a museum. So, now we have graffiti artists making very nice livings doing legal graffiti and doing paintings. So, I thought there was a very good connection there."

The exhibition highlights many different styles of tattooing and the long history of this cultural tradition, but Kitamura wanted to remain relevant and contemporary with his featured artists. The exhibition is definitely aimed at the younger generations of Japanese Americans, but Kitamura and Fulbeck traveled all over the world to photograph the leading artists and their fleeting artworks. "I purposely didn't invite some of the older generations, I felt I wanted to focus on what's here and now, but all the masters are represented through their lineages," Kitamura said. "You know, Horitsune may be deceased, but his work lives on through Miyazo. I also wanted to show the global nature of Japanese tattooing. We also show people who may not work in Japanese style, but show influence of Japanese work. So not only are people doing Japanese stuff, but they are also using things from Japanese tattooing to make things fit for them."

Fulbeck and Kitamura both hope this kind of exhibition will spawn more and more like it, hoping to open the minds and hearts of many conservative Japanese, and hopefully exhibit this exhibit or others like it back in Japan. "The big thing is going to be whether it shows in Japan," Fulbeck says. "That's going to be the big one. Obviously they see that they're getting acknowledgement, and praise from overseas, that's great--but the big thing is if it'll show in Japan, I think it's just a matter of time. I think they see other people accepting this and you know, why wouldn't you be proud of this? It is part of your natural history; tattoos are part of your culture, why wouldn't you be proud of it?"

"We tried to tackle a pretty large amount of stuff," Kitamura says. "I think it's important, and this will actually have a lot of museum and tattoo communities all over the world. I've already heard of other museums starting to get tattoo shows in the works. But for me, being a Japanese American and doing a show like this at the Japanese American National Museum was amazing. I think that represented a huge stride forward, and it's fun too, because at the opening, we had women in their 70s talking to people in full body suits--it's like racism, it's hard to be racist when you're talking to somebody; all that prejudice just drops away--and they're like, 'wait, you're not a gangster, you're a nice person, you're a schoolteacher!' I think that broke down a lot of barriers."

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Top Image: Tattoo work by Horikiku.

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Posted The Rise of the Independents: Upstart SoCal Music Fests to Artboundtag:www.kcet.org,2014:/arts/artbound//1834.718072014-04-15T08:00:00Z2014-04-18T00:07:28ZLarge music festivals like Coachella have inspired a growth in independent festivals in L.A. to offer alternative options for underground music and art aficionados.Evan Sennhttp://www.kcet.org/cgi-bin/mt/mt-cp.cgi?__mode=view&blog_id=1834&id=6312
While some of the world's most popular musicians will be gracing the stage of the increasingly popular Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival very soon, the extreme growth of the festival and others like it in recent years has inspired the local music and art scenes in Los Angeles to step up and offer alternative options for underground music and art aficionados. The ever-growing popularity of festivals like Coachella, Lollapalooza, Bonaroo and South By South West has gotten out of hand for a lot of music lovers, who really just want a ton of great music in one location. The crowds, the costs, the mainstream and possibly unimaginative lineups -- it can be too much to bare, even for your favorite mainstream band. Since the resurgence of self-publishing, independent labels and D.I.Y. style music distribution, with the downward spiral of corporate record labels, there are a handful of smaller festivals that have been growing in the wake of the giant corporate festivals, and in turn, beginning to do what fests like Coachella couldn't. These fests connect with the local music community in Southern California, and the larger scene of what is being created and appreciated in new music right now. Festivals like FYF Fest, Burgerama, Desert Daze and Brokechella are offering alternative events for more independent and cutting-edge music lovers and Angelenos can't get enough of them.

These independent festivals offer creative and talented rosters of independent, alternative and brand new musicians for all types of aficionados. FYF Fest, one of the longest running independent fests in L.A. has been showcasing emerging talent and some of the best alternative acts since 2004. Burgerama is another annual festival that brings alternative acts and up-and-coming indie stars to the limelight. Hosted by the Orange County independent label Burger Records, located in Fullerton, this itty-bitty storefront record label produces some of the most well known and popular independent acts around. Acts like Summer Twins, Cosmonauts, Shannon and the Clams, Thee Oh Sees, Cherry Glazerr, Bombon and many more -- and keeps it classy with its additional throwback cassette and vinyl releases of new music. This year, Burger Records held its third-annual showcase festival at the Observatory OC. More than 50 bands in the extended Burger family performed at this year's jam-packed event. The ever popular psych-happy White Fang and strangely seductive NOBUNNY packed the house alongside special guests like dark and ominous Sleep and indie hip-hop nerd Kool Keith. Burgerama also had the increasingly popular Black Lips, the Growlers, the Coathangers, Bleached and Mac DeMarco. Burgerama may not have made it to the billboard's top festivals to attend list, but any hipster within a 200-mile radius of OC knew what was going down with this quirky and impressive showcase.

Desert Daze is another independent festival that has gotten some extreme love in the past few years, bringing new music to the ears of the strange and creative types of Southern California. This year, KCRW has teamed up with Moon Block Party -- the insane and dedicated producers of Desert Daze, who take over Pomona once a year to put on a smaller version in the arts district of Pomona (helping to raise money for the School for the Arts) -- to put together a stellar line up of underground and avant-garde tunes. Taking place every year, out in the kaleidoscopic Sunset Ranch Oasis in Mecca, Desert Daze has a Burning-Man-esque aura imbedded in its existence, drawing hundreds of hobo-looking scenesters, with artwork and style that rivals the 1960s psychedelic art movement. This festival brings a younger target audience to the desert, more well versed in experimental, alternative and new underground music. A completely artist-designed, artist-driven fest, Desert Daze was created by members of two major independent bands, Phil Pirrone from JJUUJJUU and Julie Edwards of Deap Vally, these dedicated professionals floored major music corporations in 2012 when Desert Daze became one of the world's longest consecutive day music festivals with over 120 acts on two stages at a roadhouse in the desert for eleven straight days and nights. In 2013, the Daze expanded with campgrounds and grew their numbers even more.

Phil Pirrone, the founder of the festival, says that it's their attention to detail that really set them apart. "Having traveled a lot and played a lot of festivals, we noticed that fesitvals in Europe pay a lot of attention to detail, in a way that American festivals don't;" Pirrne says, "and we are trying to bring some of that attention to detail to our festivals."
Crystal Antlers, Dengue Fever, Akron Family, Warpaint, Chelsea Wolfe and Fool's Gold have all played Desert Daze in the past. This year, Blonde Redhead and The Raveonettes grace the sun-soaked stages, along with DIIV, Unknown Mortal Orchestra, Liars, Vincent Gallo, Autolux and more.

A good festical can change a person's like and Pirrone admits that it is important to keep the festival positive and invigorating for attendees. "A festival can be a very important thing on a cellular level and if its done right it can be energizing," Pirrone says. "That's the meaning of a festival, for people to come and be entertained with joy and energy, and for people to leave feeling joyful and full of energy."

Brokechella may be one of the most surprising come ups in SoCal alternative fests, but is clearly giving the urban-dwelling, can't-leave-L.A.-ers another reason never to leave the city limits. In true L.A. fashion, Brokechella is all about the local. With four stages of music set up at downtown L.A.'s Airliner, all local submission-based or recruited, Brokechella gives the up-and-comers a chance to play alongside some bigger names in underground music. Brokechella also values the many different styles of underground music, along with experimental and installation-based art and comedy. Having grown from an accidental scheduling conflict with Coachella, the organizers, including Executive Producer Negin Singh, embraced the anti-Coachella attitude and staycation style and were met with overwhelming response of support and love from local Angelenos. Singh says they are in full support of Coachella, and hope that some of the bands they feature at Brokechella will get more attention from playing at their fest. Though Brokechella is adamant about not having "headliners," they are very loyal and excited to have bands return to the Brokechella stages year after year. Yoya is one of the returning groups that have played Brokechella every year since it's inception in 2011. Executive Producer Negin Singh is looking forward to having Yoya come back again. "They're so awesome, because they have grown with us. In the same way that we've doubled in popularity, so have they. They've even released a new album every year since then . . . we love how much they hustle to get their stuff done. So I'm excited to showcase them again."

Alongside 50+ musical performances, Brokechella is dedicate to the other arts, performative, comedy and visual -- they are also a huge proponent of making the festival deaf accessible. CARTEL Collaborative Arts LA host dozens of events throughout the year, with art and music, but Brokechella is really their main platform now. Artist Anna Schumacher is one of many fascinating artist participating in Brokechella this year, helping to create visual artwork to engage the deaf festival-goers in a creative way.

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Keeping the ticket cost low is important to Brokechella, and regardless of how popular the fest seems to get, that's something that they refuse to change. "To get something out there that is a good idea but not a profitable one, is so hard, but I think it's so important, Singh says. "Sometimes you have to do something that doesn't make a lot of money but is awesome and it invigorates the community, and you're going to do it, and it feeds you in a different way. We're not doing it because it's easy."

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